The city, which is in the hot race for location of capital for the successor State of Andhra Pradesh, is fast becoming a concrete jungle with mushrooming of apartments.

However, more and more people are taking to terrace cultivation putting to best use whatever little open space available with them on the terrace and on balconies to promote greenery and lead a healthier life as the apartment culture has come to stay.

Growing saplings on the terrace and on balconies of apartments can reduce carbon emission and air pollution, says Dr.Kona Radhakrishnamurthy, a retired professor from C.S.R. Sarma College here, while speaking to The Hindu.

“Growing saplings is like child rearing,’’ adds Dr Radhakrishnamurthy, Reader in Philsophy, who has turned his penthouse into a beautiful garden growing plants that could withstand moisture stress and seasonal plants including the most-loved jasmine.

“We can make our locality a better place to live in getting accustomed to new urban lifestyle,” says a housewife Santi who has taken to vegetable gardening in her apartment in a small way.

She has sown the seeds of change among other flat owners, who are equally fed up with ever-increasing cost of fruits and vegetables as also flowers.

Let more and more people join the bandwagon getting the thrill of growing plants to lead a better life in the given situation, adds a technocrat, M Srinivasa Rao getting tuned to the changing lifestyle. The Horticulture Department should organise events to promote terrace cultivation among apartment owners, they added.